Bitrate: Variable

Contributor

03.15.10

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

Label: Sub Pop Records

When Sub Pop announced they were signing Happy Birthday, it was tempting to consider the whole thing a lark. The label described their music as "comic-book pop," they had no songs publicly available and, well, their name is Happy Birthday. As it turns out, Sub Pop's flip unveiling was a perfect introduction to the band's endearingly irreverent world. This is a frewheeling, kinda goofy record, with song titles like "Maxine the Teenage Eskimo" and choruses… read more »

Contributor

03.15.10

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday

Label: Sub Pop Records

When Sub Pop announced they were signing Happy Birthday, it was tempting to consider the whole thing a lark. The label described their music as "comic-book pop," they had no songs publicly available and, well, their name is Happy Birthday. As it turns out, Sub Pop's flip unveiling was a perfect introduction to the band's endearingly irreverent world. This is a frewheeling, kinda goofy record, with song titles like "Maxine the Teenage Eskimo" and choruses like, "In a perfect world, I'd be perverted, girl." It's a testament to the songwriting — deceivingly inventive and undeniably catchy — that Happy Birthday's effect is so lasting despite feeling so tossed-off as it unfolds.

Songwriter Kyle Thomas (also the mastermind behind the wildly underrated King Tuff) has a serious '70s jones — his songs dip in and out of powerpop, punk and glam, sounding classic but also refreshingly rickety. Fans of post-Nuggets guitar-pop like to talk about "should-be-hits" — entries on a parallel-universe Top 40 where autotune and guyliner, for better or for worse, never existed. Happy Birthday's got a handful: "Subliminal Message," with its sweeping synth line, tricky descending melody and perfectly breathy chorus vocal, "2 Shy," a great mid-tempo fuzzy guitar shuffle, and album opener "Girls FM" — maybe the best of the lot — a bratty blast with a twinkling chorus, and the best, most immediate hook on the record.

The band's genesis involves Thomas recruiting a couple of friends to "play his new pop songs because he was too scared to play by himself." Any fear the frontman may have had isn't apparent here — the playing, and singing especially, is exuberant and assured, even when notes aren't quite hit — but the album certainly benefits from the carefree spontaneity that comes from a few friends getting together and bashing it out. Thomas is the story, though — a nasal, girl-crazy pop savant who has delivered an impressive set of irresistible, near-perfect pop songs.

Happy Birthday may be bedroom lo-fi from the fuzzy sound to the scribbled cartoon cover art, the buzzing guitars to the off-kilter subject matter of the songs, but they transcend any limitations of the style (real or imagined) by writing songs that would be great no matter how they were recorded. Their self-titled album is full of alternative universe radio hits from start to finish, “Girls FM” being the standout but only by a nose. Unlike many bands who have used the lo-fi excuse to record half-finished ideas and pass them off as songs, Kyle Thomas writes tightly structured tunes with hooks and dynamics that borrow from sources like the mid-’60s British Invasion, early-’90s American indie rock, and radio hits from the ’50s onward but end up sounding pretty unique. That being said, Thomas and his co-horts Ruth Garbus and Chris Weissman arent afraid to steal the occasional bit here and there along the way; the drum sound on “Subliminal Message” from Tom Pettys “Dont Come Around Here No More,” the guitar riff on “Perverted Girl” from Weezers “Buddy Holly,” the atmosphere on “I Want to Stay (I Run Away)” from every moody 80s song about escape, the wackiness of the Elephant 6 crew on the psych-y “Pink Strawberry Shake.” These references are fun to pick out and catalog, but they provide only fleeting glimpses of the outside world. For most of the album, the trio exists in a hermetically sealed world (like a bedroom), where every move they make is the right one, every sound they layer into the songs is perfect, and every melody makes you glad they let you into their world. Once youre in, songs about teenage Eskimo girls, bad skin, and milkshakes make total sense. Especially when they are sung in Thomas wonderfully snotty, pleasingly innocent voice and wrapped in vocal harmonies. If history runs its inevitable course, Happy Birthday’s next album will find them moving out of the lo-fi realm and into the world of real studios and budgets that allow for more than the occasional Hot N Ready pizza. While this is usually the death of a lo-fi band, theres a good chance Happy Birthday will survive if they write songs as good as those found here, and play them with the same passion and inventiveness. Even if they do fail, lovers of the weird and infectious will always be able to go back to Happy Birthday and relive its lo-fi charms. – Tim Sendra